Super Eurobeat 128
1.Dave Simon - Killer (
Time)
After the awesome nonstop compilation 127, we're treated to more new material
and for a change we get one killer song from Time. The track kicks the album off
with an energetic and catchy song that sounds a lot more like the materials
we've come to expect from A-Beat C and names like
Powerful T. for example.
An awesome song on all standards and the song leaves you feeling very satisfied.
The lyrics are rather interesting, and a certain anonymous person keeps on
hearing "
Killer with an erection" in the lyrics, which always seems to
amaze me.
Rating : 9+
2.Lolita - Wanna Be Your Emotion (
A-Beat C)
The album carries on with the queen of eurobeat, who yet again managed to
capture my heart. I can't honestly think of a better female vocalist to sing
songs like this,
Elena's vocals are at the same time energetic, happy and
catchy, that is mainly the reason why her songs always manage to rise above the
masses. This is yet another catchy basic eurobeat song with an excellent chorus,
it may not have the same strenght as for example
Ready To Dance on
SEB122, but still it's better than many other songs on the album, just what we
can expect from her.
Rating : 9+
3.D.Essex - Restless And Wild (
Delta)
And here we have the name I at first didn't like at all, but it was this song
and
Thank You-Arigato that made me realize how good he is.
Restless
And Wild is pretty similar to many of the
D.Essex songs in the past
but the feature that separates it from the others are the excellent backgrounds
and the magnificent chorus that has more balls than 10
Mega NRG Man songs
put together. The excellency of this song was enough to convince me to turn my
direction completely for the male vocalists on eurobeat history, so I pretty
much have many reasons to give the song the grade it's getting, but otherwise as
well, this is a killer song, don't miss out on this one.
Rating : 10+
4.Sophie - Waiting For The Sun (
Time)
After a very strong album opener we get the name that has previously also often
spoiled albums by mediocore calmness. I don't have a lot against calm songs in
general, but the thing is that the eurobeat beat just doesn't fit a lot of the
calmer songs out there, and therefore I always get a contradictory feeling from
them.
Sophie has done some marvellous songs, but the truth is that most
of the songs sound very similar and also boring, fortunately this time she's
slightly above the most of the her songs.
Waiting For The Sun starts out
rather boringly, but after a few replays the song started to sound better, and
eventually I started accepting enough to not skip it. Again not my favorite name
to appear on a SEB, but things could be much worse.
Rating : 7
5.Dave & Domino - Shake Your Bell (
A-Beat C)
The duo, that has gotten rather negative feedback from me, because I've found
99% of their songs to be very boring or just crappy. I pretty much value both
names as individuals (well
Domino a whole lot more than
Dave but I
still have some respect for
Davey as well), so it feels odd how they get
boring songs time after time. Anyways
Shake Your Bell is a song where yet
again we hear more of
Dave who sounds decent, but it's really
Domino
who wins the points for this song. A mediocore song that takes a while to get
used to, the general eurobeat energy is no where in sight, and the trumpet (or
other acoustic instrument like that) in the background at first sounds very bad,
but it just takes time to get used to it. Give the song some time, and it won't
sound as bad as it sounds at first.
Rating : 7+
6.Delta Queens - Love Me Again (
Delta)
The different
Clara titles put together, or is it? Well we haven't gotten
any certainty if there are others in the
Delta Queens than just
Clara.
This song starts out as rather mellow, but slowly builds up energy and a few
replays earn this song much more edge than I at first thought I'd give it. Still
the
Delta Queens haven't gotten anywhere near to the level of the
A-Beat Sisters who have gotten way better songs in comparison, but still
this is a nice performance and the vocals in particular sound great.
Rating : 8
7.Norma Sheffield - Tender (
A-Beat C)
Perhaps it's just me, but did
Norma suddenly start to sound a lot worse?
I haven't had problems with her voice before, but I didn't really ever notice
that she actually could sang so badly, enough to give me chills going down
my spine for some reason (and not the good kind of chills). The melody is
nothing magnificent, and the sounds are your typical piano/beat combo, that gets
lost easily, and actually the only part in this song I really liked was the
c-melody that in it's simplicity sounds great. A boring song yet again, skip.
Rating : 6½
8.Leslie Parrish - Wonderlight (
Delta)
So more of
Clara and I won't complain as the level suddenly went up a lot
with this interesting song. The intro has cool sounds and when the hyper synth
is added in you just feel start to feel energetic even if you don't want to. The
chorus boosts the mood even more and once the c-melody is back in business the
song builds up even more energy, a great sollution and for some reason I felt as
if the song would've gotten faster and faster as it progressed (though it didn't).
The song doesn't offer anything we wouldn't already know well, but it produces a
nice mixture with the good old elements.
Rating : 8½
9.Powerful T. - Great Balls Of Fire (
A-Beat C)
After a line of girly girl songs, we're treated so a song with a lot of balls,
as
Powerful T. displays yet another energetic song with a fun-packed
chorus. Like most songs on the album so far, this one also recycles old elements
and in the end creates a mixture that is not anything new or special, but just a
basic good song. The catchiness of the chorus relies pretty much on the great
vocals, that don't really go up and down like normally with
Powerful T.
so perhaps the people who don't like the extreme key-changes would like this one
as well.
Rating : 8½
10.Kevin Johnson - Pretty Little Girl (
Delta)
For some reason I've started to grow a liking to
Kevin Johnson and his
songs mainly because he sounded so damn good on the
Euro Acoustic Essence
version of
Little Crush. Suddenly I notice that my ears are open and I
can hear how damn good the guy sounds. This track is another typical eurobeat
song with a great chorus and a kick-ass c-melody, but again it's not a song that
would break the genre barries to add in something new unfortunately. A nice song,
and a big plus for the great vocalist.
Rating : 8½
11.Mary Lane - Nice Boy (
Time)
A very beautiful musicbox intro starts another Time song that got my hopes up as
the intro just sounds so cool. A lot of the times when the intro sounds
spectacular the song turns out rather mediocore, and that applies partly this
time as well. The verses in the song sound very tedious and they're like from a
different planet with the other parts of the song. The backgrounds are rather
light and the vocals are the key-element thorough the song but at least during
the chorus and the c-melody the sounds actually get to shine a bit, in
particular huge plus for the c-melody. Nice vocals and pretty simple lyrics,
though at the same time rather cute.
Rating : 7½
12.Valentina - That You Want (
A-Beat C)
How 80's can a song sound? Everytime I hear this song I'm taken back to my
childhood, the intro sounds exactly like the music I heard as a kid, fortunately
it changes a bit but the 80's synths and the vocoder sounds drag it a bit back
to the golden decade. I'm not the biggest
Valentina fan but somehow this
song managed to capture my attention on the very first time I heard it, perhaps
the nostalgic 80's feel is what made me like it (so I'm a huge fan of the 80's
music, so what?). Excellent chorus, excellent c-melody, a good song over all,
more materials like this from
Valentina, still
Harmony remains
unbeaten.
Rating : 9+
13.Toby Ash - My Love Is Forever (
Time)
Time seems to do their regular yo-yo movement again, as we have had a couple of
great songs and also a couple of bad songs. This song is again pretty typical
eurobeat, but the spoken male vocals in the chorus sound exactly like the vocals
on the older
Ace Of Base vocals and I always get warm and fuzzy feelings
as I start to think of
Happy Nation and that's why I probably liked this
song more. So I can say that when the links to other songs are done with taste,
and not very obviously they're a good thing. Good song on most levels, great on
the chorus, boring due to the mediocore sounds.
Rating : 8+
14.Helena - Illusion (
Time)
Time seems to stick to the same patterns with a few of the names, like
Helena
for example, this song is pretty similar to some of her songs, and this time the
similarity is a drag for the song. I couldn't probably tell this apart from
Just An Illusion even if the latter one was made over 100 SEBs ago. The song
is much better than the music we hear on MTV over here, but when I know that
there's a lot better songs to go for, I probably wouldn't listen to this
intentionally, but I don't either skip it when I listen to this SEB.
Rating : 7-
15.Nuage - Sunday (
A-Beat C)
And on to my next favorite, I can't help myself as I've grown a liking to many
of the female vocalists on A-Beat C...
Nuage, Lolita & Domino always
brighten up my day, and I have the masterminds at A-Beat C to thank for that.
This is yet another fantastic song on the line of
Nuage's impressive
performances, a powerful chorus, awesome backgrounds, catchy melody and of
course the great vocals. What more can a person ask? And as it's Sunday when I'm
writing the review I'll say that this is just the perfect song for the moment.
Rating : 10+
16.Robert Patton - Vampire (
Time)
Eurobeat with themes is always a good thing, this time we're again in the world
of vampires, and it's not the first time, just got flashbacks into
Hot
Vampire and
Black Vampire. In comparison to the two this one falls
somewhere in between, and is a nice song that shines mainly because of the
variable and different backgrounds. The occasional screams at first sound nice,
but eventually just start to annoy you as they aren't the nicest thing to hear.
The Transylvanian sounds give the song a distinctive feel which in addition to
the great vocal works make the song stand out above the mass.
Rating : 9-
17.Virgin Power - Living For (
Delta)
After the rather grim feelings we're taken back to the more upbeat athmosphere
by the name that always makes me feel dirty for some reason (so yeah I'm a
pervert, everybody knows that already).
Living For is a typical Delta
production with good girly girl vocals and effective backgrounds. For girl
eurobeat the song has rather heavy backgrounds (we're not talking about _HEAVY_
but in comparison to the vast majority), which makes the song stick out and
eventually rise above many others on the album, a good song as we're getting
nearer to the end.
Rating : 9
18.Matt Land Feat. Kiko Lourero - The Road Is On Fire (
A-Beat C)
The best for the last? Well at least my favorite vocalist is back with another
song, and he sounds as sexy as always *purrs*. Like we've already learned
Matt doesn't release a bad song, and that applies again. This song
is a catchy song that's heavy on the guitars on the backgrounds, so everybody
will surely know we're on A-Beat C grounds. The chorus in the song stands out
clearly from the rest, and the catchy c-melody boosts up the effect even more, a
pity though that the verses aren't as catchy as the rest of the song. Still a
great way to end the album, and still high quality the
Matt style.
Rating :
9
Final Words :
After the great Nonstop album I was rather surprised how well this album
turned out, too bad that this is 128, as the nonstop that is 130 won't probably
have as many songs from this album that would really earn to be on it. A great
compilation over all, and specially
Nuage and
D.Essex offer real
treats from different styles of Eurobeat, so there's something for fans of
different styles. Overall this album wasn't probably as cheery as most of the
eurobeat albums in the past, which might please some a lot, but I found it to be
a bit of a minus, as the happier songs are always bigger hits for me. Anyways,
this is a solid SEB and definitely recommended for any person who enjoys good
eurobeat.
Final Score : 9-
Reviewed by Bore